Wednesday, April 7, 2010

I don't like modern news. I don't. Especially not cable news. The fecklessness of the 24-hour news cycle in America just makes me feel dumber every time I watch it. I get my news from online sources mostly: BBC and Reuters, HuffPo and Raw for my political fix. My problem with cable news is the polarity: I hate Fox, and I can only take so much MSNBC. I like Rachel Maddow for her investigative journalism, but everything else just seems a shoutfest.

CNN prides itself on being the most nonpartisan of the three major cable outlets, but to achieve that they have to pick the EXACT golden mean between the two extremes of contemporary public dialogue. And as a result, they assume that ALL arguments are equally valid, and that every story really DOES have two sides. And when they do that, shit like THIS happens:

Look. My problem is not with the political leanings, or lack thereof, from CNN. My problem is with the sheer slack-jawed credulity with which they do their reporting. There is no difference, in their eyes, between the weight given to a licensed expert and some quack kicked out of an organization years ago for breaches of ethics. Read my lips: American cable news is STUPID. You simply DO NOT see this kind of garbage on CNN International. What happened to news that challenged authority, of any stripe? What happened to journalists that risked their lives to bring corruption and injustice to light? I turn on the news now, and all I see are talking heads. People in power promise exclusivity for favorable coverage, and types like John King, or Judith Miller, or Bob Novak deliver. Doesn't matter whether it's a D or an R on the end.

Do you get it, America? Your news is not biased. It is simply for sale.

5 comments:

I spend the majority of my existence trying to get my body to the point where I can move easily...as a result, I pay an awful lot of attention to media.

I usually have MSNBC in the background, muted but playing in case I see a story that I want to hear. I have Internet media up constantly. And I will flip over to the SPAN throughout the day to see what is on. The radio is almost always on AM1090 - the local leftist radio.

What I have found happening over the last couple of years is that FOX has given up any pretense of being "fair and balanced." MSNBC has settled into their "market." [Someone in MSNBC corporate felt that this would be their niche.] CNN has gone totally right wing - expecially in their commercials. I cannot even watch CNN anymore.

Media is media - it is not "news". The main benefit of having the bloviators on is that I can get any 'breaking' news and then go hunt out the 'full' story online.

Usually it is not that the media gives a false story (unless we are talking FOX - which is completely a fiction station) it is that they do not offer a full story. They leave out so much pertinent info that I need to go seek out elsewhere. Info that changes the meaning of the story.

However, it seems that they think that the majority of the populace is too stupid to be able to handle the in depth story. Unless it is some filthy soft-porn like Too Catch a Predator or prison porn like the MSNBC LockBlock crap. So we never get the full news because the media thinks that we are stupid and need to provide us with little charts and graphs and majick boards.

They are all a bunch of fucking corporate tools and their goal is to make money. Some of the good ones, like Rachel and Keith and of course Thom Hartmann are not in it for the money...they want to provide information.